Fatal Light Awareness

by John O'Neill

  “What circumstances?” Alison said. “The doctor said it was nothing.” Then, as she waved for a cab: “I hate Toronto. I’d like to live in Manhattan. It’s like, so fast. Just jump in, and you’re there.”

  Leonard left Alison at her door. They hugged, and he was aware of the limpness of her arms. He kissed her on the cheek, then moved his mouth onto hers. She pulled away, there was no mistaking her reluctance, despite their night together.

  “Hey, we were fucking earlier, Alison,” he wanted to say. “Remember? Why did you phone me? Why won’t you let me stay?” Instead he said: “Alison, what’s wrong, what’s going on?”

  She frowned and said: “I’ll talk to you later, I can’t now.”

  She went inside and, without looking back, closed her door. Leonard waited for a few minutes, to see if the lights in the living room would go on, or if she might reconsider.

  7

  CRY BABY

  Leonard walked back to a street that had already become part of the geography of regret, along with locations he’d always associate with his wife. He suspected her story about meeting friends was just that and decided to wait in his car to see if she’d leave. He turned to walk north, for a moment was confused as to where he’d parked. Rain began.

  A car door opened in front of him. Startled, he stepped aside, continued, looked back to see a man emerge, slam the door. The voice stopped him.

  “Edison, hold up. I’m Frank Corvu. Alison’s father. You owe me an explanation.”

  Shit. Not now, not now.

  He decided that, whatever happened, he’d do and say little beyond defending himself. And whatever reason he had for trying to push Alison’s father away now seemed pointless. Alison was lost to him – or at least that was the evidence of this night, evidence of his emptiness. But it was an emptiness, too, that might prove useful, a place where anger lived.

  “Hello,” Leonard said.

  “Mr. Edison,” Frank Corvu said. “I asked you to stop seeing her. I told you there’d be consequences. Clearly, you don’t care. Why don’t you respect my wishes?”

  Leonard looked in Alison’s father’s face, tried to separate it from the other features of the wet street, the other textures of night. Like Leonard, he had dark brown hair, greying on overgrown sideburns. Like Leonard, too, he had pronounced crows-feet and a thin, severe mouth that didn’t seem likely to soften or crack at the absurdity of this showdown. Alison had mentioned that her father looked like him, but he was surprised at the resemblance. Only the man’s chin was different, cleft in the middle, the two sides thrust out. And his eyes contained in fuller measure the sadness that Leonard had just seen in Alison. He had his daughter’s eyes. He was wearing a loose black jacket; it looked like leather but Leonard suspected something cheaper, and brown cords that were too long, dragging behind his shoes. Though the rain had only just begun, his lower half appeared as though he’d come through a deluge. His appearance deteriorated as it got closer to the ground, and Leonard realized he looked familiar for another reason, that he’d seen him somewhere before. But, in the heat of the exchange, in the anticipation of argument and possible violence, he couldn’t think of where. Leonard took a step back, and to the side.

  “It’s not a matter of respect,” Leonard answered, calmly. “Alison, I respect she’s your daughter, but she can make her own decisions. She’s strong, you must be proud. But, Mr. Corvu, really, I’m not sure why you need to be involved.”

  “How old are you?” Mr. Corvu said. “You have no idea how. Alison’s all I have. I know, sir, that’s not your problem. But you were her teacher, for God’s sake. What kind of example is that? What kind of man are you? I know you’re married. Why Alison? Al needs to be clear of this sort of thing. Believe me, I know.”

  Leonard was seeing Alison by the hospital bed. He said again, almost in a whisper, a whisper because he was embarrassed but the low tone lending the words a gravity he hadn’t intended: “It’s up to her what she does. We can make our own decisions. I’m sorry, but it’s not up to you.”

  Alison’s father let his face drop and Leonard saw distraction there, as if the man’s mind had shifted to something else, to some distant event – some episode in his life that Alison was compensation for. And that he was recognizing, for the first time, that this was an unreasonable burden.

  The notion made Leonard soften, so he took a step forward, said evenly and firmly: “Anyway, I don’t think I’ll be seeing your daughter any time soon.”

  A wave of confusion passed over Frank Corvu’s face. Then, what looked like irritation. He began to shake his head, took his hands from his jacket pockets. Turned away, went back to his car. Put his hands on the roof above the passenger door. Leonard noticed, then, the rust along the car’s side and the missing hubcaps. Mr. Corvu leaned in close, did a push-up against the window, pushed off again, leaned close, pushed off, stood straight up, turned and approached Leonard. He’d been working himself up to something and Leonard’s reassuring words hadn’t altered his plan. Leonard refused to offer anything else, any other condolence, as if the evening’s events required a violent conclusion, the settling of a score, at least the settling of something, that the climax he hadn’t achieved earlier on Alison’s bed needed to take the form of an altercation with her father.

  Frank Corvu came close to Leonard and said, almost spitting: “Don’t see, don’t fucking see my daughter again. I’m warning you, sir, this is it, this is the last time.”

  Leonard detected a faint scent of alcohol. He breathed deeply, let his shoulders drop, closed his eyes. Realized, insulated by the proximity to Alison’s house, that no matter what happened she would feel responsible. Opened his eyes. Alison’s father was looking up toward his daughter’s window. Leonard looked there too and saw that a light had come on. It went out again and the curtains moved. He was certain, now, Alison was watching. They were two schoolboys facing off for the attention of a girl. Leonard laughed out loud, realized this was the wrong thing to do.

  So he said, pre-emptively, taking a small step forward: “Mr. Corvu, I’m going to keep seeing Alison. This is the last time? Are you kidding? Well, all right, since you know I’m going to keep seeing her, what are you going to do? You may as well do it right now.”

  Alison’s father smiled, stood his ground. Turned, walked back to his car, slapped the roof. Shoving his hands in his pant pockets he laughed, and said: “Sorry, I thought you had some dignity. I won’t do anything yet. But you’ll see what’ll happen.”

  He walked the length of his car, strolled behind it and crossed the street toward Alison’s house. He stopped, waved at Leonard and shouted: “Goodnight. I’m going to see my daughter.”

  In a moment, he was knocking. Leonard saw, in the crescent of glass above the front entrance, the hall light come on.

  Leonard walked to his car. Whatever else was uncertain, he knew Alison did not want to see him that night. And the idea of some kind of three-way discussion among them was too strange. He was afraid he’d vanish further in that configuration. Leonard sat in his car for 20 minutes, wondering about what would pass between father and daughter. He imagined they’d fight and she’d send him away as she’d sent Leonard away. But it occurred to him that Alison had planned to see her father – that was what she’d referred to earlier. Why had he been sitting in his car outside her home? Had he been there when they’d taken the cab to the hospital? Perhaps he’d even followed and been disturbed by the mystery of their arrival at the emergency ward. What would it have suggested? Some injury to his daughter? Some queer sexual predicament that needed immediate medical intervention? Perhaps Frank had held back from assaulting him because he sensed that their visit to the hospital stemmed from Leonard’s infirmity. He wondered what he’d meant by the words You’ll see what will happen. Maybe Alison was in danger. He decided he might find some clue as to Frank Corvu’s intentions by examining his car. Leonard had been struck by the man’s disordered appearance, his roughness. He was in serious decline.r />
  Leonard left his car, found Frank’s. Saw the rust, again, the bald tires. Saw, too, that the interior was filled to bursting with things: blankets and plastic bags stuffed with clothes covered the backseat, as well as some old stereo equipment, a turntable. On the floor were record albums – the top one, Jethro Tull’s Aqualung – books, newspapers, a couch cushion, and, riding on top, a collapsible water jug, half-filled with red liquid. On the front seat was a sleeping bag, draped over a stack of file folders. Some bulging shoe boxes tied with string and something that looked like netting. The only uncovered area was a small space left on the driver’s side, but even this was partially blocked by a frameless mirror, propped against the files, and a small plush toy, Tweetybird from the cartoon. On the dashboard was a man’s toiletry case. It seemed Alison’s father was living out of his car. He paused, unsure what to do with the information. Its only relevance was in telling him that Alison’s ambivalence had something to do with her father’s situation, that she was embarrassed. But why wouldn’t she share this information with him? Leonard was nothing if not patient and could help her get through whatever crisis might be affecting her father’s life.

  Leonard decided that to delay what was going to be an inevitably sleepless night, he’d wait to see how long Alison’s father stayed and would try to steal a glimpse of the happenings inside. Maybe this would answer some questions. He’d begin with the windows, surmising that father and daughter were talking either in Alison’s bedroom (the most likely place for reconciliation, for low, conciliatory tones; or for a crime of passion), or the kitchen (Leonard recalled himself sitting there, when Alison had appeared in full makeup and wrapped herself around him, amidst the crusts of bread on the counter, the browning melon rind, the cockroaches). Both spaces, then, were ambiguous. It was a city house, a student house. Leonard thought of Beverly, if she’d take his side in an argument with, or about, Alison’s father. Decided he hated everyone there.

  He remembered there was an alleyway that might afford a decent view of the kitchen. He’d give the alley an unambiguous personality this night, claim it as a place for subterfuge. He’d make it what an alley should be, a place in the city for illicit moments, for passages on the edge. The city included such places routinely in its landscapes, was aware of and celebrated its own dark side. The suburbs merely pretended. And Leonard needed to claim some space as his own: he’d lost the suburbs to Cynthia, was losing the city to Alison.

  Leonard walked through the drizzle and found the alley. There were lampposts at intervals along the ramshackle corridor but they threw indifferent light. Most of the garages had been tagged, elaborate scrolls of colour twisting into words that had no meaning for Leonard but that boasted of vital affiliations. He felt that each blast of colour included Alison in its swirl, that she had been claimed by one of these midnight marauders. He expected to see her name tagged across a garage door. There were piles of scrap-metal, cardboard boxes, a couple of abandoned trees in pots, a stack of clothing that glistened with the rain. Smells: of mildew and motor-oil, rotting food and wet dog, of occasional sweetness. The houses were unrecognizable from behind so he had to backtrack. He moved through an opening between two of the houses, emerged on the main street, saw that he was still two doors from Alison’s place.

  Returning to the alley, Leonard glanced through a first-floor side window into a burgundy room. There were beautiful paintings of black flowers in large gilded frames and a wall bursting with books from hardwood floor to ceiling. There was a figure sitting on a couch watching television, a figure with an enormous head. It took a moment for Leonard to realize it was someone in a kind of Mardi Gras costume, the body all prison stripes, the head a red-faced mewling baby, bald but with a single curl of blonde plastic hair sprouting from its brow. The wearer must have been trying it on in anticipation of Hallowe’en, became absorbed by something. Leonard stood there a moment, imagined the cartoon crybaby might notice him, might aim the remote and poke it, change the channel on who he was. But it never turned its crybaby face from the wall of light.

  Leonard found the rear of Alison’s house, saw the kitchen light was on, but couldn’t see bodies. He looked for shadows, for evidence of movement. He needed to see her bedroom window. At least, then, he would know where she and her father conversed, the exact location of his exclusion.

  He moved down the thin passageway between Alison’s place and the next, by the garage that had begun to tilt precariously. As he moved farther, the dim alleyway faded completely. He let his eyes adjust. There was light in her bedroom window. The glow from her flag curtain made a square of red near the top of the grey brick wall. It occurred to Leonard that he might be able to hear conversation. Listened. Heard, instead, a scrabbling, rattle. A raccoon waddled away toward the main street, the light catching its wet back as it slid under Alison’s porch. Leonard stepped carefully across the metal garbage can lid the animal had been using as a plate for fish bones. Beside it was a rusted gardening spade. As he moved beyond this place setting, he almost struck his face against a large object that blocked the alleyway in front of him. A ladder. It extended from where he stood to the lip below Alison’s window. It was a large metal ladder and its bottom was wedged against the foundation of the opposite house. Leonard waited, considering the possibilities, the history of this ladder – why was it here? Did Alison use the ladder unobserved to enter her own room, as an escape route under some specific circumstance, perhaps to avoid her father who’d taken to observing her comings and goings? Was this the romantic conceit of a boyfriend Leonard didn’t know about? Was the ladder positioned there by a thief or rapist who abandoned his scheme before its completion? Was Alison in danger? Or was it simply that her landlord was doing some repairs, and had left the ladder for the resumption of work the next day?

  Leonard’s mind jumped from consideration of the ladder’s history to its present possibilities. It seemed a too fortuitous circumstance. He knew he’d have to climb it and felt he’d been led to this dark space between houses by strange providence. Unnatural to resist such destiny. And he was concerned for Alison’s safety so could claim he’d climbed the ladder in pursuit of some clue as to the reason for its presence. But he was afraid about what he might see through her window, though her British flag was pinned across it.

  As he climbed toward the red square, he looked up to see that the clouds were breaking and stars blinked through them. He paused as he neared Alison’s window, believing his reluctance, his measured ascent, was evidence of his conscience, that each slow step had to be preceded by a small moral struggle. His pangs of guilt lent pathos to his actions, were mitigating circumstances. And the ladder begged to be utilized; it beckoned with its symmetry, its straightness. Even its slipperiness lent his climbing a heady measure of risk. He kept imagining what might happen if his feet skidded off the rungs, how it might be days before anyone found his body in the space between houses, how Alison herself might discover him by the proliferation of cats and raccoons and squirrels feeding on his carcass. Forty is too young to die, and the animal wasn’t even injured. How she’d be filled with a combination of revulsion and pity at finding him, wrecked voyeur, half-consumed beneath her window.

  Leonard halted again when his head was about to clear the window ledge. He listened hard but could hear nothing but the rainwater leaking through the eaves troughs. He took another step to find the flag did indeed cover most of Alison’s window. But there was a small rent in the fabric through which he could see a piece of her bedroom. He didn’t want to look, staring, instead, at the bricks. At his hands. Felt as if he were a reader, gripping a large, ominous book, was afraid of turning the page, turned the page.

  He could see Alison’s bed – the horizontal sliver in the fabric, in fact, corresponded almost exactly to its shape. Alison’s father was on it, sitting at its foot, legs folded in yoga stance, hands on his knees. He’d removed his shoes and one of his big toes, greenish and wrinkled like a lizard’s head, protruded through his sock. O
ther than this he was fully clothed, even wore his jacket. Leonard could not, though, see his face.

  The picture was made more unusual by the bright light inside the room. Apparently, Alison had switched on both her dresser lamp and the overhead light. Perhaps she wanted to erase any sense of intimacy. And there seemed to be some other light source, new to the space. Under it, Frank Corvu looked particularly old, ragged.

  Leonard turned his ear toward the window but still could hear nothing. He couldn’t see Alison but assumed she stood against her dresser, facing her father. He wanted to believe they were exchanging angry words. But Frank Corvu’s body language contradicted this; his arms, shoulders were relaxed. After ten minutes, Alison’s father put his arms behind him and leaned back, so his face came into view. Afraid he’d be seen, Leonard descended. But, before he moved, he saw that Alison’s father was indeed relaxed, was not engaged in any fierce discussion. In fact, Frank Corvu was smiling. Laughing.

  Leonard groped through the darkness toward his car. It seemed that Alison felt no rancour toward her father, that she’d welcomed him. This could really only mean one thing – that Alison had moved Leonard into her past. She’d even chosen to talk with her father in her bedroom, he on her bed, where earlier Leonard and Alison had made love, where he’d suddenly felt his heart overwhelm him. Apparently, her father’s living conditions were not an issue, neither his personal hygiene. She was replacing Leonard now, erasing him with both her father, Buddha-like and happy, and the scouring white light. As if the ladder had been placed there precisely so Leonard could witness his own disappearance, better than words she could speak. After all, Alison was a projectionist. The little tear in the fabric of the flag was a deliberate and cruel lens.

  8

  SHADOW ELLIS

  A small girl is guiding a little boat by the edge of the fountain; she is kneeling on a curved strip of concrete, inclined down to where her hand touches the sail. She is smiling and singing to herself. Above her, in the fountain’s centre, is the statue of a great stag, its antlers like antennae against the cloudy sky, at its side two fawns, cowering for protection. The whole sculpture is greened bronze. A few feet away, a woman reclines in a metal chair, a book in her hands. Beside her is a stroller. I’m aware of a rising breeze, my own long hair covers my face, for a moment obstructs the view. The peacefulness is broken by sudden movement – a large dog races in from the periphery. Sleek as a wave, it leaps onto the fountain’s concrete perimeter and clamps its jaws on the head of the child, whose body convulses. There is a churning, a spray of liquid and blood from the pond’s edge, the dog shaking its blunt head. The mother doesn’t break from reading her book. Eventually the dog has dragged the child into the fountain’s centre, beneath the legs of the stag. The child’s body floats, now, not far from the small sail boat. I want to move, but stand rooted. I imagine that my rapidly beating heart is visible, on the outside of me. The woman puts down her book, stands, looks at her child in the water, at the dog that now noses at the edge. She turns and walks toward me. At she nears, I see her face is twisted, disfigured by anger and grief. It’s a terrible face, terrible expression. I’m to blame. I can’t back away. Her face is an abyss, a hole I may fall into if I risk contact with what used to be her eyes.